South Side - Represent

Quadrant: One of the four parts into which a plane is divided by the coordinate axes.

We were adventurers, explorers, sailing the asphalt sea in a 1973 Chevy van. Like Columbus, Vespucci, Magellan and Cook, we ventured out into the unknown, seeking new land and places to get good tacos.

We would drive out into greater Los Angeles, without a map. Without a destination. The point was to get lost. Then, find our way back. That was the game, and it was fun. We always found our way back, but first, we always seemed to find our way to LAX.

It is a true, but little known fact; all roads in LA lead to LAX.

The benefit was, through trial and error, we all learned the full functional layout of a very large place, which is necessary, because, down there, no one actually lives in the city where they live. For instance, you may live in one city, like Glendale, and you may work in another city, like Culver City. Maybe your dad lives in West Covina, but your band has a gig in Pomona.

If you live there, like some of you do, you know that you really live in the place as a whole. If you have to go shopping, maybe you go to Santa Monica, or Pasadena, or Newport. If you're going to the beach, you have literally hundreds of miles of choices. In LA, "LA" means anything from Malibu to Palm Springs to Dana Point. It's all the same place, and folks wander, subject to traffic restrictions, across the grid.

Portlanders, on the other hand, look at the world in a much less-adventurous way. The Portland metro area, for folks who don't know, is essentially divided into four quadrants by the Willamette River and Burnside Street: NW, NE, SW and SE. Of course there is an area just called "North Portland" or "NOPO," but there is no such thing as a "fifth quadrant," so most folks, including the city council, just pretend that NOPO doesn't exist.

In Portland, however, very few folks cross the arbitrary lines. Eastsiders do NOT go to the Westside, and Westsiders do NOT go to the Eastside. Downtown is technically on the Westside, but it has been declared neutral. Oddly, there is less discrimination between North and South.

What's worse is, even though most all of Portland is suburban-like, with very few actual urban dwellers, folks who live within the city's suburbs like to think of themselves as urban-savvy, street-tough and oh-so-metropolitan. Ironically, they deride and dismiss those "folks in the burbs," as they themselves sit in the landscaped back yard of their single-family row house...

The divisions are silly, but frustratingly quite real. It is like pulling teeth to get a Westsider to drive anywhere East of the Willamette River or to get an Eastsider to travel West of the Washington Park Zoo.

I'm not kidding. The fear, anxiety, prejudice and obstinance is palpable. Look, folks are entitled to their opinions, but I really just cannot understand it.

As I live at the southern tip, along a major freeway, with social and financial interests in every quadrant of the city, I dwell in the whole place, as I did in Los Angeles. I am as comfortable at Clackamas Town Center as I am at Washington Square. I am surrounded by three equidistant Costcos. I feel fine to dine in the Pearl, or I will wander Hawthorne looking for a meal. I can play darts on the Westside at the Dublin Pub, or I can play on the Eastside at the Horsebrass. My office is on the Westside but my bank and my wife's office are on the East.

Portland is not just any one quadrant. It is the flavor of the city soup when you mix in the artsy yuppies from the NW, the pot smokers from the SE, the earthy soccer moms from Lake Oswego, the Asian frat-boy techies from Beaverton and the gentrifying gay men from NE... Portland should be taken as a whole...

Well, all of Portland, except Gresham. Nobody likes Gresham. That place sucks!